


from you the flowers grow

by ThunderstormsandMemories



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Communication, F/F, Flower Crowns, Fluff, Mutual Pining, exes to friends to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 23:58:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16294445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories
Summary: in which Hella and Adaire have history, Hella has an idea, and Adaire has allergies(set very vaguely in the canon timeline but no specific references to time or place so there shouldn't be any Winter/Spring spoilers afaik)





	from you the flowers grow

**Author's Note:**

> ok so it's not "established" "canon" that Hella and Adaire are fraught exes but please. their bonds at the beginning of Winter sure are Like That

Hella glared at the pile of squashed flowers at her feet as if it was their fault she didn’t know how to make a flower crown. It shouldn’t have been this difficult. Children could do it. She’d seen them, at festivals and on village greens, and they made it look so easy, like anyone could do it. Hella, apparently, could not.

She sighed grumpily, swore under her breath, dropped her most recent failed attempt, and considered giving up the whole endeavor. By now, she was continuing just as much through sheer stubbornness as she was for the reason she’d originally started. She was going to do something cute for Adaire, and she wasn't about to be stopped by some plants. She was getting pretty tired of messing up, though, and was just about desperate enough to ask someone for help, if there had been anyone around to ask. Throndir would’ve known, definitely, or even Fero, but neither of them were here. Hadrian was, but she doubted he would have been able to help her. Rosana could’ve, but Rosana was far away, and besides, Hella had spent too long with a hopeless crush on Rosana to be able to ask her for help courting her new crush-slash-ex-slash-whatever-they-were. Did Adaire count as an ex if it was only meant to be a short fling that turned into incredibly awkward traveling companions who accidentally still had some sort of feelings for each other? And Adaire herself almost certainly would’ve known, but asking Adaire for help would defeat the purpose of the whole cute surprise thing. And so Hella, as usual, was on her own.

It occurred to her that while the flowers she was trying to use were the prettiest, the brightest, the ones that reminded her the most of Adaire, they might not be sturdy enough to make a good crown out of, and wandered farther away from the town, deeper into the field, where the grasses grew longer and the wildflowers taller with thicker stems, hopefully better for braiding. She picked a few more of the prettier-but-flimsier flowers first, though, thinking that she could maybe attach them somehow anyway. She wasn't entirely sure what they were called; all of the plants here were so different from what she was used to.

She was right about the wildflowers, and after only a few more attempts, she had a respectable flower crown, the stems twisted together into a remarkably symmetrical circlet, into which she tucked a few of the structurally useless flowers.

When she looked up, the sun was higher in the sky than she’d been expecting. She decided she must be out of practice judging time by the position of the sun, considering all those weeks and months she’d gone without seeing it at all. She’d set out first thing in the morning, intending only to find somewhere private to practice some of her fighting moves, but then she noticed all of the flowers in full bloom, remembered Adaire wearing flowers in her hair to a fair so long ago it felt like a different lifetime, and decided that a gift like that would be the perfect way to start a conversation that they’d both been dancing around for as long as they’d been on this journey together.

But first she had to figure out what to say, because that was the problem, that was why she had to use the flower crown to start the conversation, because she had no idea what the right words were to explain her feelings, to herself let alone to Adaire, who always seemed to have too many words and expect too many from Hella in return. She laid down in the long grass and closed her eyes, trying to plan out her speech, but it had been so long since she’d been out on a clear spring day, the sun warm and bright overhead, just the right amount of cool breeze off the sea to keep her from getting uncomfortably hot, that she’d forgotten how easy it was to doze off.

She woke up to Adaire’s voice, somewhere nearby, saying, “There you are, I was getting worried.”

Hella stood up hurriedly, brushing dirt off of her pants. Usually she was a light sleeper and woke up when she heard footsteps anywhere close, but Adaire had always been able to sneak up on her, in more ways than one. “Hey,” she said. “I’m fine. I can handle anything.”

“I know you can,” Adaire said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t still worry about you.”

“Oh,” Hella said, because she wasn’t sure if Adaire meant to send her heart fluttering the way she did. “Well. Anyway. I have something for you.” She picked up the flower crown, thankful she wasn’t a restless sleeper and hadn’t rolled over on it during her accidentally nap. “May I?”

“Oh,” Adaire said, softly, surprised. “Sure.” Hella placed it on her head gently, taking a moment to adjust the position so that it wouldn’t fall off. “Thanks,” said Adaire, as Hella stepped back, and her cheeks were pink, either with blushing or the start of a sunburn, Hella wasn’t sure. And then Adaire sneezed. And sneezed again, and didn’t stop sneezing until her sneezes grew so violent that the flower crown fell from her head and landed on the ground between them, somehow still intact. Hella felt a little flare of pride that she had made it so well, immediately eclipsed by her concern for Adaire, who had stopped sneezing but was now sniffling slightly and looking down at the flowers sadly. “It’s a very pretty flower crown,” Adaire said. “You did a good job. Well-made. Nice and sturdy.”

“You’re allergic to it, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Adaire said. “Sorry about that. It really is very nice.”

“I’m so sorry,” Hella said. “I didn’t know.” She returned Adaire’s comforting smile half-heartedly, wondering how she was supposed to have this conversation now that her gift had been a failure and she’d fallen asleep before planning out what she wanted to say.

“Hey,” Adaire, “how about I show you some flowers I’m not allergic to? There aren’t many, but they do exist.” She took Hella by the hand and led her to the edge of the field, to a different patch of wildflowers, some of which looked almost identical to the ones Hella had used. She let go of Hella’s hand to start picking flowers, explaining to her about types of pollen and leaves and how to pick plants that would braid together more easily, and Hella really was trying to pay attention, but she could still feel the ghost of Adaire's touch and there was something captivating about how Adaire’s hands moved, her fingers deftly weaving together the flowers, and Hella was thinking about how it had felt to have those fingers entwined with her own, and then she tore her gaze away from Adaire’s hands to her face, only to find herself distracted by a stray piece of her hair that had come loose from her cap and filled with the urge to tuck it back behind her ear and maybe touch Adaire’s cheek softly as she did so.

And then she realized that Adaire had been trying to get her attention. “Hella? Are you okay?”

“I’m listening, I swear,” Hella said, and Adaire laughed, bright and contagious, and then Hella was laughing too, without really even knowing why.

“I definitely believe you,” said Adaire, handing her a completed flower crown that she had finished while Hella was distracted. “Here. It goes with your hair.” The flowers were a very pretty deep blue, which Hella supposed would go well with her hair, and she bent down to let Adaire place it on her head. When she looked up again, Adaire was grinning in a way that usually meant trouble. “Your turn.”

“What?”

“You wanted to make one for me, right? So I just showed you how to do it with plants that won’t make me sneeze my lungs out,” she said, her voice light and teasing, and Hella grinned.

“Just you watch and see,” Hella said, and began picking more flowers, specifically using colors that matched Adaire’s eyes, and some violets that matched the trim of her dress. Adaire was mostly quiet, watching her while she worked, though she did once steer Hella’s hand away from a flower she’d been about to use that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be the same as the ones she’d used the first time. And when the crown was done, Hella set it on Adaire’s head triumphantly as if it were a real crown of gold and jewels.

“So you didn’t just randomly decide to do all this,” Adaire said, “right? What’s this about?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” said Hella. “And also I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Well, thank you,” said Adaire.

“This was fun, right?” said Hella. “We should do it again sometime.”

“Yeah,” said Adaire. “I had fun too. Now what did you want to talk about?”

Hella took a deep breath before she answered. This was what she wanted, she told herself. They needed to talk about this. “Us,” she said.

“Okay,” Adaire said. “What about us?”

“Well, we- I- what are we doing?”

“In general, or right now?” Adaire said. “Because in general, we’re trying to find a way to stop the Heat and the Dark somehow, and specifically right now we’re standing in a field making flower crowns and avoiding talking about our feelings.”

“I’m trying to talk about my feelings!” said Hella. “I’m not doing it very well, am I?”

“You’re doing fine,” said Adaire encouragingly. “So how are you feeling?”

“How are _you_ feeling?” Hella said automatically, and then realized she was just deflecting by being contrary just because she could. “I mean, you do remember how we met right?”

“I tried to rob you?” Adaire said. “Are you still taking that personally? I try to rob pretty much everyone, it’s kind of part of being a thief."

“I mean after that,” said Hella. “When we said it was just going to be fun for a few days until I had to leave again.”

“Yeah?” Adaire said cautiously.

“I don’t know,” said Hella. “Maybe this was a bad idea, actually. I still like you, okay? I just thought you should know since we’re gonna be here together for a while probably, and I should’ve said something way earlier when we started out from Velas but it never really seemed like the right time and I didn’t wanna make things awkward because I know it was supposed to just be a temporary thing but it wasn’t, for me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Adaire said, and that was so far from what Hella expected or wanted to hear that she almost turned around and walked away. “I should have realized, but we said- I thought you were fine with it being over, so I had to be fine with it being over too, because I have feelings for you but also I like being your friend, and we work well together so I didn’t want to disrupt that.”

“Oh, wow,” said Hella, because she didn’t know what else to say and her useless mouth said the first thing that came to mind. “I didn’t know. You seemed like you’d moved on.”

“Hella,” Adaire said seriously, and then seemed to change her mind about what she was going to say halfway through, because she suddenly smiled and said, “did you really just say ‘oh, wow’ in response to someone confessing their feelings to you?”

“Yeah,” said Hella defensively. “What about it? You’re the one who didn’t realize I was still into you.”

“You didn’t either,” Adaire pointed out, smirking a little bit, and she was definitely standing closer than she had been at the beginning of this conversation. “Why are we both so bad at this? We definitely weren’t so bad at this before.”

“Everything’s so complicated now,” said Hella. “I don’t want us to be complicated anymore.” And she reached out and tuck that loose strand of Adaire’s hair behind her ear, and let her hand linger for a moment on her cheek.

“Me neither,” said Adaire softly, and she leaned up on her toes to kiss Hella, who tried to help by lifting Adaire up instead of leaning down herself, lost her balance, and went tumbling to the ground with Adaire landing on top of her, their faces very close together and even more of Adaire’s hair falling loose and tickling Hella’s neck.

Hella pulled Adaire into another kiss, this one longer and deeper and less disastrous, her legs hooked around Adaire’s and Adaire’s hands in her hair, and when they broke apart, breathless and laughing, Hella said, “You’re messing up my flower crown.”

“You can make another one,” Adaire said, leaning in to kiss her again.

**Author's Note:**

> so this is inspired by one of the prompts from FatT Femslash Week, which I was going to participate in except I didn't have time then because I was traveling a lot to go to a Hayley Kiyoko concert and then I had an idea for this one specific day (the flowers prompt) so I outlined the whole thing in my head anyway because I was bored while getting my Sappho tattoo and I know that sounds like I just put every vaguely wlw thing I could think of in one sentence but I swear that's how my week actually went
> 
> anyway then I finally got the motivation to actually write the thing because Spring started and now I'm in a 24/7 Helladaire mood, please join me in yelling about these good good women whomst I love on twitter at @s_artemisios
> 
> title from Patricia by Florence + the Machine


End file.
